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Thursday, June 05, 2014

There are several crowdfunding sites that allow people to raise money for a variety of projects. The two most notable are Kickstarter and Indiegogo. I just assumed that anyone who had a project they wanted to bring to life could simply set up an account and then work their butts off to reach their monetary goal. Apparently not so, at least with Kickstarter. There's some major censorship going on over there.

Remember Kermit Gosnell, the doctor who ran a cash-cow abortion house of horrors where, for decades, he killed thousands of babies in late-term abortions, but was only convicted of murdering three infants that were born alive? By severing their spinal chords? The trial was essentially ignored by most of the mainstream media, so some conservative filmmakers decided to seek funding through Kickstarter for a TV drama about Gosnell's heinous deeds, so producer Phelim McAleer (of FrackNation fame) set up an account. However, Kickstarter wanted to censor some of the campaign language used to describe Gosnell's crimes, like:

"1000s of babies stabbed to death" and "1000s of babies murdered"

According to Kickstarter staff, those phrases did not

"comply with the spirit of Community Guidelines."

But Gosnell did murder thousands of babies. So rather than cave to Kickstarter's censorship, McAleer and his partners switched to Indiegogo, raising a whopping $2.25 million, far surpassing their initial goal.

After much criticism regarding how the Gosnell movie was handled, Kickstarter has changed some of its policies. CEO Yancey Strickler wrote:

We want creators to have the support and freedom they need when building their projects. That’s why we’re introducing a feature called Launch Now. It gives creators a simple choice: go ahead and launch your project whenever you’re ready, or get feedback from one of our Community Managers first.

Only 60 percent of projects can use the Launch Now Program, but that's set to increase soon.

McAleer and co are happy about the changes, but not totally convinced things will change.

"It's a sign that maybe diversity is now being welcomed at Kickstarter. It was a huge shock that they tried to censor the truth about our project because it might have offended some of their audience."

"It's not clear if Kickstarter are still retaining the option of closing down campaigns they don't like after the launch - or if the campaigns post something they don't like in updates. They threatened that with us also - it's a huge threat to any campaign and is an effective way of enforcing censorship."

Even though the Indiegogo campaign has ended, they are still looking for money. If you have some extra cash, you will still be entitled to perks. You can check it out on the "Gosnell" movie website.